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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29991393">Promise</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/inSufficient_Caution/pseuds/inSufficient_Caution'>inSufficient_Caution</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:35:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,458</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29991393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/inSufficient_Caution/pseuds/inSufficient_Caution</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood is thicker than water.  The phrase has two interpretations. One of which in the original phrase - where the "blood of the covenant" is the bond between friends and allies united by choice, while the "waters of the womb" are the bonds between family members, those united by fate.  The other represents an inversion of the first, where blood relation is taken to be stronger a bond than any woven by volition alone.  But which is true?  And what of those found families, those bound by a decision take up familiar roles, by the decision to take young into the fold and to love them as any blood relative?  What of the strength of the bonds of blood and water?  Of family and friend - choice and fate?  We know the strength of bonds by their breaking - and the wounds therein inflicted.  Naru has forged bonds of unbroken love; let us test their worth, and find her family's truth.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Promise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ku's first memories are of two pools of darkness, the stars that dot them dancing with awe as she is passed from one pair of arms into another; a curious warmth wrapped in tentative strength enveloping her.  "Sibling," it crooned, the voice ringing high and frail while its bearer brought the young owl close to their chest, gazing questioningly up at another.  "Ma...?"</p><p>The owlet's eyes follow the creature's, head turning away from the gleaming white fur as her vision is bathed in azure hues.  There is a titan of a figure, shaped with a generous roundness and cast in violets like her own, but darkened, a shade nearing black seemingly draped across their head and shoulders, the rich color broken in a single place: the face, which would seem almost a pale mask were it not for the fluidity of its motion; a smile that seems to glow as brightly as the one who holds her.  "Her name is Ku, my sweet little Light."</p><p>She does not remember struggling free from her egg, but she sees its lilac shell - or fragments thereof - as she casts her eyes questioningly around the homely little place, the cool greys of the stone walls tempered by the warmer colors of wood and prairie grasses that form and decorate various platforms and furnishings. Something within her asks the question of where food is, and her body begins to tremble as the cold Spring air begins to seep into her tiny bones.</p><p>"C'mon, Ku.  I'm Ori - let's get you into your nest," the chirpish, mirthful tones return, the body to which she is being held rumbling ever so slightly as they speak.  A surge of motion elicits a cry from the owlet, before she is set down in a bed of woven grasses; soft, warm bundles of cloth slowly enveloping her.</p><p>"She's cold," observes the glowing creature, whose eyes glimmer now with a touch of concern, ears at each side of the head drooped back as they turn towards 'Ma,' "Can you -"</p><p>The gentle giant nods, turning towards a wicker basket, "I'll get the mealworms, you keep your sister warm."</p><p>Ori crawls into the nest, carefully curling around Ku's thoroughly-bundled form. It's bright.  But it's warm.  And it feels like home.  </p><p>When Ku opens her eyes again, it's dark.  But it's still warm.  She chirps happily, and 'Ma' returns, with food.  Ori watches from beside the nest, wrapped in a blanket of their own that blocks out the majority of the light.</p><p>It isn't long before patchy down is replaced by a thicker coat of the same, light purple feathers quickly becoming a common insulation in the family's repertoire. An intrepid being not unlike some demented mix between a spider and a salamander calling itself Gumo is all too keen on arranging all manner of pulleys and lifts for the owlet, as well as more practical projects, a mad smile burning itself into her mind as the mark of mischief yet to come.  Gumo insists on calling 'Ma' Naru, but she always seems more like a 'Ma' when tending the bumps and bruises the mad genius periodically incurs.</p><p>A garden is arranged - or re-arranged - in the back of the cavern beneath the sunward opening, woven baskets carrying simple tools and plants from which to extract seeds or sprouts while clay pots bear water for if the days turn dry on the more sensitive specimens.  Ku watches from her perch - her nest - as the work is done; Naru hauling while Ori takes up arms and churns the earth into soil suitable for their meager crop. Gumo arranges an apparatus made from cut reeds with holes and one of the water vessels. Where worms are found, they are collected in a wooden bowl, from which the luminous member of the family sneaks the occasional snack for their growing sister. </p><p>When all is said and done, river-stones are used to border the garden from the rest of the home.  Ku is retrieved from her blankets with a smile and held close to an excited Ori's heart.  Naru drags a slab of stone out from somewhere aside before setting it against the wall by the new garden, its surface marked with four figures - facsimiles of Naru, Ori, Gumo, and looking down upon them, an avian visage that seems almost like it could be Ku, in the decades to come. Several bowls of pigments and chalks are set aside, and a new face is added.  A tiny owlet, right beside her sibling.</p><p>New life has come to Nibel.</p><p>With summer comes a sense of balance, a thicker, darker coat of down, and all manner of changes in the world known to Ku.  And a beginning to many sleepless nights in her loving family.</p><p>Gumo, the quick thinker that he is and least familiar with the peculiar habits of children, panics the most.  As Naru takes the blankets which swaddle Ku's nest down to the river to wash, and the owlet does not seem to return with her mother, the strange reptile is taken aside by his own fear and instructed in the injury of sensitive ears and Naru's nigh-infinite patience.</p><p>The more experienced parent is resigned to the practice of trickery to retrieve her roving daughter, hauling the family cauldron outside to strike with a wooden spoon as though in anticipation for the afternoon meal.  When the sounds of hoofsteps and of laughter like chimes answers her siren song, Naru's lips turn upwards in a smile restored.</p><p>Ori dashes in towards the Swallow's Nest, towards the cave they call home, a young purple bird perched upon their head.</p><p>"Sibling runs fast - and jumps so high! I could feel the wind!" Her voice is weak, young, almost slurred, drawing out some syllables while clipping others.  She is better than most at her age in speech, though she does not know this.</p><p>The aforementioned sibling blanches as Ku reveals their escapades, the swaying motion causing the owlet to grasp their crest with a clumsy wing, giving an excited squeal as she does.</p><p>"Again! Again!"</p><p>Naru almost caves in at the overjoyed look in Ku's eyes.  </p><p>Almost.</p><p>Another day, she finds herself meandering under the absent watch of Gumo, his attention focused more on the bridge which separates their home from the orchard from which the majority of their fruits are sourced.  The creek it spans has been broader and deeper now than in prior years, the wellspring from which it is sourced surging with the wealth of rains that have bombarded the Forest for weeks.  </p><p>Clear as crystal, one still wonders how Gumo thought Ku lost to the waves when he looked to the nest-basket where he had left the owlet to find it empty.  Still, madness and genius are twins, and one yields the other when the passions are left untempered by reason.  Ori finds their sibling, and by the time Naru has quelled the worst of Gumo’s terrors, both mettles are tested with the image of a brilliant star in the canopy of a tree, showing its onyx twin the beauty of the forest from as high as they dare.</p><p>Of course, even Ori, who has trekked the whole of the Forest in which their home is but a single dot, is not without their own lapses.  It is with a quiet, persistent terror that they approach Naru, jaw tight with worry as they recount where they last saw Ku.  </p><p>The escape artist is known to procure her sibling on most occasions where she leaves the attention of her adoptive parents, after all.</p><p>An echoing crash finds her adjacent a shattered pot, jam leaking from the ruined vessel.  The sound scares her, and the thought of upsetting her mother even moreso.  Naru spends the evening reassuring her daughter - and retaining her oath to help with the next batch.</p><p>In the end, there is much to be done; fruits to pick, alterations and expansions to the Nest to be made in anticipation of Ku's further growth, and misadventures to be had in showing the young, curious owlet the world that surrounds them all.</p><p>Additional edifices prove Gumo as fine a carpenter as he is an engineer; building upon the Nest to yield a tower from which to view the stars - and to store those things that harken back to days left blind.  Soon a hammock is built and the lake out past the orchard finds its own port in an attempt to create someplace from which to procure fish.</p><p>Naru clears the rust from her childhood talent in masonry, rebuilding the map stone which sat in pieces behind the Nest in a time before Ori, before the forest had been rent fallow in forsaken Blindness.  Each of the dizzying knots and lines marks a path, a link between the stones which dot Nibel.  As she works, the pits and gaps begin to glimmer, shining with otherworldly Light.</p><p>Ori serves their many sentences teaching - a reminder of the lessons Naru once gave them, and a way to strengthen the bond between two already as leaves on a branch.  They have a knack for stories - tales of Spirit Guardians, creatures like themselves, wandering through a Forest that does not know kindness, a touch of the darkness that still jolts them awake on stormy nights when the air seems most like that of Ginso or Horu or the ruin which also haunts Gumo’s nightmares with blades of frozen malice.</p><p>The seasons turn, the sun and moon and stars make their daily vigils, ringing the world on all myriad occasions.  In time, wounds left raw by the Blindness and concealed from the owlet find themselves healed, though the scars remain.</p><p>With Summer’s end comes the Fall, and it is the fifteenth season where Ku’s plumage turns from light, dense fluff to its first proper cloak of darkened violet.  She can leap nearly as well as her sibling, and woe betide what finds itself beneath her finely-honed talons, but she is not fit to fly - not yet.</p><p>Though the condition of her wing begs the question of whether she ever would.</p><p>Of Ku’s wings, one seems withered, the feathers wan and sickly, those which would normally catch the air reduced to bare shafts.  Of them all, Gumo was the first to notice, and the first to devise a solution, for the days when she would seek for the sky.  A prototype of the prosthetic used the last of Ori’s keepsakes - Kuro’s feather, pulled from the titanic Striga in the days of Blindness - as its core.  But there is only so much strength in such an artifact, and while Ku’s eyes are level to the ground, he keeps himself from moving forwards with more complex devices.</p><p>In the meantime, the fall harvests - of fruit from the orchard and what vegetables had matured in their garden - and the matters of making something that might last of it occupied them all.  With Ku’s growth, comes a necessary graduation in her own meals; a tendency to chase after and pounce upon small mammals evolving from the games of tag she would periodically play with her sibling into a rudimentary hunting pounce.</p><p>The eagerness with which she partook left them uneasy at first.  But Ku is Ku, and Ku is kind and curious, if rambunctious and more than a little mischievous.  Gumo had taken to teaching her the mechanisms of the world, how a stick and a rock can lift even a boulder, placed properly.  His symbols are new, and Ku devours these as she does her mice.</p><p>But of all things, Fall has much to teach about death and sleep, and the anxiety felt bone-deep by Naru and Ori as their familiar trees bared themselves to the slowly freezing skies.  Ori’s tales are more frightening, but they still sleep beside their sister - and Ku could never fail to rest with such a brilliant light beside her.  It is Naru’s insistence on a measured, regular diet, and the careful rationing Ori conducted day-by-day that Ku finds the most unnerving.  As young as she may be, she is not without insight, and she knows when one of the two has stayed up all night counting the stores.</p><p>Ku’s first snows were an image of wonder to her - something that seemed to shine like her sibling, but was cold instead of warm to the touch.  When cloaked in down alone, her feathers would get too wet too quickly to dare venture out, but watching Ori pile boulders of snow on top of each other, and needle their mother into chiseling the ice they dragged from the lake into a proper sculpture convinced her that this was the season of wonder.</p><p>Later winters did nothing to dissuade her - and when she first slid across the lake, having slipped from the edge of the pier, she was besides herself with joy - moving without moving, the her motion maintained without effort - and without becoming soaked, as she would if she tried to swim in the creek.</p><p>According to Naru, Striga don’t swim.  Ku decided they did, until the cold argued back.</p><p>It was then that there was the most time for learning in the conventional sense; Ori and Ku both had seasons yet to come before they were grown.  The curriculum is homebrewed - Gumo teaches what he can of mechanics and mathematics and strange things that grow in caves.  Naru teaches of the Forest, its history, and the best way to make soup out of mushrooms.  Gumo teaches the motions of the heavens and the firmament in which they are embedded, and Naru that of the earth and its fruits.  There is no such thing as a stupid question, and there is always time for a demonstration.</p><p>On quiet days, as Ku’s talons etch ever more complicated equations into the soil, Gumo wonders if perhaps her exposure to the Light before she had hatched had done more than cripple her.  On days like these, he idly spun the thought of progressing to the higher mathematics, and the mechanisms of Light itself, sooner rather than later.  But the delicate science wouldn’t have a practical element without the right tools and supplies, equipment he would have to return to the Grotto left behind so long ago to retrieve.  And the more advanced lessons might yet require a return to where the Element of Winds had frozen the homes of his kin.</p><p>For now, it was best not to dwell on the erstwhile fortress, now a sepulchre by all definitions except the most precise.  Besides, it was doubtless others had come across the place and robbed the forlorn ruin.  It was not the way of such things to go unfound.</p><p>Besides, the next season was always nearing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>And here we are again - on the eve where it all began.  Where Sunder was a response steeped in emotion, Promise takes the premise and the elements that represent what could have been, and tries to reassemble them into the story that should have been.  At its heart, the relationship between Ori and Ku.  In its soul, a question of purpose in a directionless world.  What I can't promise is a structured schedule - I'll post each chapter as it's ready.  As it is I might throw some minute edits onto this one and change around the summary content over the next week or two while I figure out how best to put it.  Thank you for giving this (admittedly slow) start a try, and I endeavor to see you in the next chapter.</p><p>And many thanks to all who read through my initial drabblings while I put this idea and this chapter together.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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